Video 5:21
Council chaos

Shire officials have been meeting in Alice Springs and it's clear councillors and staff are struggling to make ends meet under the new Super Shires.

Transcript

MELINDA JAMES - Presenter: It's just over a year since the first local government elections were held for the new super shires.

The council reforms and amalgamations have been dogged by controversy since they were announced by the Territory Government back in 2006.

Representatives from shires across the Territory have been meeting in Alice Springs and it's clear that both elected officials and staff are struggling to make ends meet.

I spoke to the president of the NT's Local Government Association Kerry Moir earlier today.

MELINDA JAMES: Kerry Moir, welcome to Stateline.

KERRY MOIR - President LGANT: Thank you, Melinda.

MELINDA JAMES: We consistently hear stories of shires without the resources to do what they're supposed to do, and councils have only been operating for a year and there have already been a fair few by-elections. Have the shires been set up to fail?

KERRY MOIR: I don't believe they have been set up to fail. I certainly believe that the Government was absolutely sincere in its belief that there was no alternative to amalgamations and that there must be local government reform. That was a matter that Local Government Association and its members agreed as well. As to the shape of that reform, the haste of that reform certainly we made very clear that the timetable was wrong. The implementation plan was hasty and ill considered, the budget figures probably came out of thin air because there was no precedent to base those budget figures on. And so when you look at the Act and the raft of additional functions councils are suppose to do and you look at the funding that they actually have, you look at the state of the assets that they have inherited now they do not have the budget to go out and replace infrastructure so you know let alone building depreciation etc. They are also, because they're shires they're running a whole range of other government functions like Centrelink and they're given the money to run that service but not to cover admin expenses in terms of the office space, equipment, etc so they're under-funded in terms of all those other government agencies, the post office and so forth that they run. If they don't run them then people out there don't have access to those normal services that we all expect. For elected members who have put their hand up to go into that situation and genuinely want to do work on behalf of their shires and achieve the promise that the government made that no, no person in a shire would have services of a lesser standard than they received before then you have got to have the money and the means to be able to deliver those services.

MELINDA JAMES: It seems extraordinary that the Territory Government didn't anticipate this?

KERRY MOIR: I think that there were a lot of questions about assets. I think there was an assumption for example that all of the assets in those shires areas would come across to the shire. Now in fact, in many areas buildings have belonged to another corporation perhaps an incorporated association, perhaps a football club, perhaps the store was privately owned and so those pieces of infrastructure did not necessarily come across. Equipment was thought to be in working order once it actually arrived was found not to be. All of those things were not properly quantified and I put that down to the fact there was far too much haste in the implementation and as we know with the Minister apologising to shires yesterday there was no real implementation planned for the business systems that were put in place and so obviously now they are getting that sort of information because of a big remedial project they're understanding that they are in dire financial striates.

MELINDA JAMES: Under the Local Government Act, councils must be in the black at all times. How many councils do you think are running a deficit?

KERRY MOIR: I don't think they are running a deficit budget, I think they're just not doing some of the things they are suppose to be doing simply because they can not fund them. The minister was told yesterday by some shires that they fear that they are going to get qualified audits when they get their audit reports back from their external auditors and under the act then they could be investigated for that. The Minister made it clear that they, the Government understood that it was not their fault that they didn't have the financial information for the auditor and they would be taking that into account when they looked at the finances and financial figures and the audit reports for councils.

MELINDA JAMES: From an outsider's point of view it looks like a mess - what needs to be done?

KERRY MOIR: I believe that the councils themselves are operating as best they can. That's come, every council bar one in the whole of the Northern Territory was represented at this meeting. What they are doing though and what we are doing and what we've done through the Australian Local Government Association is say to the Federal Government and to the NT Government - if you want these services delivered, if you want to close the gap, if you want it to be more than rhetoric then you need to put in significant sums of money. If the Federal Government is serious and the NT Government about creating employment in growth towns then there has go to be equipment for people to operate, there has got to be surveys so people can build buildings and so forth and so on. People will get jobs if they, the governments understand that you just can't create a job without any tools to do that job.